


Water

by LinneaLund



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: F/M, post-s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 08:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3844048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinneaLund/pseuds/LinneaLund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-S2 snapshot of Clarke's life after she walks away from Camp Jaha. "In the many years since Bellamy found his way to her homestead, learning to take the love she offered, that single element of his character has never changed:  The rawness of his love, his fear of losing her.  It rankles and riles against Clarke’s indifference to risk, occasional arguments rising from the shadowy depths of their relationship..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water

**Water**

They build their first house near a lake. In later years it will be given a title for use on the maps of the area, but in the beginning, it has no name other than _what it is_. Its function becoming its description.

“I’m going to head down to the water,” Clarke tells Bellamy each morning of that first summer after the war (after she walks away from Camp Jaha and he follows), her eyes drawn like a lover’s to the glassy surface. He frowns and sighs and leans in to brush a kiss against her lips.

“I’ll keep an eye on things until you get back,” he answers tightly. And then (a heartbeat later), “Be careful, Clarke. _Please_. I couldn’t stand it if something happened.”

In the years since the war ended, and Clarke walked away from her life and obligations, she’s become inured to fear. She’s seen death, and dealt it. Loved, and had that love torn away. Trusted and been betrayed. _Why should she worry now?_ But she isn’t the only one here. After Bellamy found his way to the homestead – insisting that she didn’t have to survive alone – he’s become quite the opposite. There is a single element of his character which has grown more intense in their years together: _The rawness of his love for Clarke, his fear of losing her_. It rankles and riles against her indifference to risk, occasional arguments rising from the shadowy depths of their relationship.

The water where Clarke swims each morning is only _one_ of these disagreements. Some of them she accedes – she wants to be happy here with Bellamy, after all – but this one she refuses him. She’s lived long enough on her own, an outcast from her own people, alone on this new world, to have learned that each day is a gift. She wants this life - _to be alive, rather than simply exist -_ and Bellamy’s fear for her will not change it.

_His fear won’t protect me either,_ she thinks, but never says. They’ve both lost people they loved.

Today, Clarke keeps her eye on the water in the distance, a shining silver plate laid onto the green cloth of cultivated fields, her feet moving almost on their own. Behind her, the two story stone and wood house (a hovel by last century’s standards, but grand by today’s measure) disappears into the haze as she follows the path to the orchard. It’s hot already, and at midsummer it will only grow worse. She pulls a folded handkerchief from the pocket of her shirt, wiping at the back of her sunburned neck. She is eager for the cool embrace of water, her body beginning to hum in anticipation of that first moment. The flash of cold as she breaks the surface, icy water rising around her.

The lake is surrounded on three sides by a heavy copse of fruit trees, part of the reason she chose to settle this land. The first winter was hard. The second, slightly easier. The last three, almost decadent in its comfort. As she rounds a bend, the fence appears (another of Bellamy’s accomplishments). Seeing it, her smile wavers.

The wooden structure is a testament to worry. Bellamy’s love for Clarke and their only child is a raw wound in his chest. Each moment of kindness wrapped in the expectation of loss. Clarke knows the secret _why_ , of course. Everyone from the Ark has lost someone they’ve loved. (Clarke refuses to think of her mother, and the fact that she’s Abby’s living loss. It’s easier to think of the dead.) But for Bellamy, his fear turns to action. With Octavia married and on her own, he no longer has someone to care for, so he’s focused this drive on his new family instead, determined to protect her and their child

In the last years, the grooves in Bellamy’s face have deepened, his concern taking hold in his physical form. It is the clearest distinction between the two of them, but for all of that, it hasn’t changed Clarke’s love for him. She waits out Bellamy’s moments of apprehension, caressing away his troubles, and letting him bury the years of loss in her body. At the beginning, Clarke wasn’t sure she’d ever come to love him without question – he knew her dark secrets, after all - but their child has changed that. They are tethered together. The two of them working toward a shared future.

_A future for Jake._

Up ahead, Bellamy’s neatly built gate blocks her path, the wooden hinge tied tight with an aging tie, an out-of-place leftover from Mount Weather. The silk – an unknown element on this continent – is plenty strong to hold it closed. Reaching the barrier, Clarke swings one leg over and then the next, refusing to be bothered to open it. (Some things were never meant to be caged.) She smiles as she jogs across the grass, breathing in the fresh green scent of the air, remembering her times locked away inside the Ark, dreaming, dreaming of water and sun and the world beneath her feet. Clarke’s tanned skin is prickles with the rising heat of the day, ears tuned to the sound of the insects buzzing in the air. All of this wraps around her to become home, filling her heart with peace and joy. She is followed by her ghosts – those people she’s killed, enemies and lovers alike – but today they are only a faint echo in the back of her mind.

And though her emotions are often tinged with darkness, for this moment, Clarke is happy.

Reaching the slope that leads down to the water, the soil begins to alter, growing silty and dry, the grass changing from a smooth carpet into thin patches and clumps until only sand remains. There is a pile of rocks over at the side of the fence. Clarke has been clearing the beach bit by bit, a few stones at a time, her thoughts, as always, on what this place will be when it is _Jake’s farm_ , and _Jake’s land_. For a moment, her eyes blur with tears at the thought, the generations following her and Bellamy. Their lives twined together, part of each of them.

She wishes her father – Jake’s namesake – had lived to see this.

Reaching the beach, Clarke pauses, pulling off her stiff shirt of homespun flax and undoing the ties on her suede skirt. She’s naked underneath, body exposed to the sun’s unwavering heat. Her once-smooth skin is riddled with marks. They tell a story of Clarke’s hard-won life: battles fought, death averted, and new life carried. Her hips and stomach are riddled with silver lashes, the marks like the scales of a fish, echoes of her single pregnancy. They are wounds she wears with pride.

Reaching the damp sand, she toes off her boots (the soles now nearly worn through) and sighs in relief as she takes the final steps down to the water. This pond and the forest that surrounds it reminds her of the water beyond Ton DC, a place Lexa once took her. (She pushes the rest of that thought away before it can take hold.) Though the water there had been saltwater, the water here at the homestead is pure and sweet. At the lake’s edge, Clarke takes a single step and then another before finally easing herself under the surface, sensing the subtle discrepancies between the two. She can tell, for instance, the buoyancy is not quite as strong here. Can feel the nuanced difference in the way the water swirls around her skin. She drops down, the chill capturing her, leaving her remembering that first moment after the hundred returned to Earth and everything was new and terrifying and beautiful.

There was a steep price to their return, but she never wants to forget the beauty that came with it.

She comes up again, a little ways in from the shore, her lung filling with air before her body submerges once more. Under the surface of the water, everything flips, her dreams alive once more. She dives down, flickers of light spreading like the bands of sunlight dancing through the depths. She resurfaces, halfway out, her body already in motion as she heads to the other side. For just a moment she wishes she could share this with Bellamy but she sets the thought aside.

Water has always been her element... _not his._

The steady strokes of her arms falter with that thought, her mind taking her to another afternoon when Bellamy sat by the shore, refusing to swim, Young Jake, wobbling on chubby legs, two steps away. Bellamy’d been lost in thought, his hands lifting the sand over and over again, while Clarke floated just offshore. She remembers his words now, the sound of them leaving her skin crawling with more than the cold.

_“There was a snake in the water when Octavia went in,”_ he’d said, glancing down at the sand in his palm. _“She was lucky to get out alive._ ”

_“She was,”_ Clarke’d agreed.

_“I’m glad you didn’t go in that day.”_

_“Me too.”_

She’s almost at the far shore now, but her mind is buzzing with the thoughts of today. With Bellamy in mind, she drops her face down into the water, inner ear swirling like a crashing wave, and propels herself off the bottom, heading back to the distant beach. She holds her breath as long as she can, staying beneath the surface where the sound is full of echoes, and her body floats, like it did in the man-made bubble of the Ark, a lifetime ago.

For a second, Bellamy’s words fill her mind: _You don’t have to do this alone._

It’s a promise he’s kept without wavering.

When she breaks the surface, she’s shocked to see that Bellamy is standing there on the far side of the gate, as if called from the recesses of memory. She watches as he undoes the tie, pushing up the wooden latch and pulling it open. He’s hand in hand with their son Jake, the toddler’s sandy blonde hair a bright cap of gold in the morning light.

“Mommy!” Jake shrieks, tumbling forward on the grass as he heads toward her. Clarke smiles, but her eyes are on her husband.

“You came to the water,” she says, grinning.

“Course we did, Princess.” He reaches down to lift Jake into his arms, waiting for her to reach the shore.

“We came because you were here.” And this time when he smiles, he is content.


End file.
